The Front

Freedom Flows in South Africa

The use of prepayment water meters violates a constitutional guarantee
of equality and a right to water, a South African High Court ruled in
April.

Prepayment water meters
require users to pay up front. No credit is awarded, as is the case with
metering in wealthier neighborhoods. Beginning in 2000, in South Africa,
water utilities have installed prepayment water meters to replace both
communal and household taps in poor rural and urban areas. Poor
households find themselves going weeks without access to water if they
cannot purchase prepaid credits.

In 2006, five residents in
Phiri township (a part of Soweto) filed suit against the city of
Johannesburg and the Johannesburg water utility, alleging prepayment
meters are unconstitutional.

The residents also claimed
that the city was failing to provide a promised 25 liters of free water
per day to residents  and that residents needed access to a larger
guarantee of free water to meet basic needs. The High Court agreed.

Prepayment meters were
introduced as part of a new policy to provide 6,000 liters (1,585
gallons) of free water per household per month. In Phiri, after the
first 6,000 liters of water, residents were required to pre-pay before
receiving any additional water. Judge Moroa Tsoka ruled that the
requirement to prepay for water  which applies only to households
in poor, traditionally black areas such as Phiri  violates South
Africas protected right to equality.

The Constitution
guarantees equality, he wrote. It is therefore inexplicable
why some residents of the city are entitled to water on credit plus free
allocation of 25 liters per person per day or 6 kiloliters per household
per month, yet the people of Phiri, such as the applicants, are denied
water on credit. In spite of the fact that they are poor, they are
expected to pay water before usage. Their counterparts, who are affluent
and mainly in rich and white areas, irrespective of how much water they
use, are entitled to water on credit. The differentiation, in my view,
contravenes the right to equality.

The High Court also held that
South Africas free basic water policy, which theoretically
provides 25 liters of water per person per day for free, was inadequate
to fulfill the constitutionally guaranteed right to water. Utilities
have traditionally provided 6,000 liters of free water monthly, without
considering the number of people living in a home. By way of comparison,
the average U.S. household uses more than 9,000 liters a day. Phiri
households, like other township households, are typically larger than
presumed by the utility policy and therefore are disadvantaged by the
policy. Under the utilites 6,000 liters a month arrangement, an
average person in Phiri gets by with only 12.5 liters of water per day
 just about enough to flush a toilet once. As part of the
implementation, Johannesburg Water, one of the defendants, handed out
leaflets explaining to residents how to budget their
water.

The court held that the 6,000
liter per household per month policy failed to give individuals 25
liters per day. It also ruled that, especially given the importance of
clean water to people with HIV, the South African constitutional
guarantee of a right to water required that people receive 50 liters per
day of free water.

Ruled the court: To
deny the applicants the right to water is to deny them the right to lead
dignified human existence, to live a South African dream: to live in a
democratic, open, caring, responsive and equal society that affirms the
values of human dignity, equality and freedom. The denial would
perpetuate the decades-long poverty, deprivation, want and undignified
existence of the recent past.

The High Court also called
the use of prepayment water meters discriminatory and procedurally
unfair, because they did not give residents an opportunity to challenge
a water cut-off.

The High Court case follows
years of struggle for township residents to guarantee the right to water
in a meaningful way. Phiri has been the center of organizing, leading to
numerous confrontations with authorities who, according to activists,
failed to take the problems seriously.

We have tried all
avenues available to negotiate with the city council about the
problems, says Dale McKinley, spokesperson for the
Anti-Privatization Forum, but the council laughed it off and stuck
to their line that the meters are the way forward.

Johannesburgs water
policy traces back to a more general attitude of paternalism among the
ruling elite, says Patrick Sindane, organizer for the Coalition Against
Water Privatization. People fought and died for the principles
embedded in the Constitution, Sindane says. The ANC Freedom
Charter stated that each person would get 50 liters of water per day.
But the priorities quickly changed. What you find today is a few elites
on the top who are making decisions and not understanding the reality on
the ground.

The case brought to light the
reality of households unable to obtain water for their basic needs. Many
residents claim that they are now worse off than during apartheid. One
of the claimants, Vusimuzi Paki, recalled battling a shack fire to no
avail because there were no funds left for water. Two children died in
the fire.

Jennifer Makoatsane, the lead
claimant in the case, reported how households were pitted against each
other in a daily struggle to provide basic water: Sometimes we
would go sneak at night. Theres a gate in my neighborhood at the
opposite end, and I would go sneak at night and use their
water.

Makoatsane lives with eight
other family members who survive on her mothers pension of
approximately $115 a month. There is no money left to pay for additional
water. Instead, every member of the household shares the bath water. The
toilet is flushed with water used for laundry or cleaning. Still, her
family usually has water for only half of the month.

When introduced in Phiri in
2004, the Johannesburg water utility made prepayment water meters the
only option other than complete disconnection of water supply. Most
residents therefore reluctantly accepted the meters. Lindiwe Mazibuko, a
third claimant, first rejected the prepayment meter. Instead she
traveled nearly two miles to get water from a reservoir in Chiawelo.
After the reservoir was closed for her use, Mazibuko reluctantly
accepted a prepaid water meter.

Civic campaigners say prepaid
meters and reduced access to water has contributed to public health
problems throughout the country. Notably, a KwaZulu Natal project
implemented in 2000 has been closely linked to a massive cholera
outbreak that killed hundreds after communities turned to polluted
rivers for drinking water when they could not afford the water from
pre-paid communal taps that were previously free.

The court called the
various social policies adopted by the respondents [Johannesburg
city] both irrational and unreasonable. The judge also noted that
prepayment water meters are outlawed in the UK due to the negative
social impact of water cut offs with no opportunity for human
intervention to thwart unjustified deprivations.

Johannesburg Mayor Amos
Masondo accused Judge Tsoka of legislating from the bench. Judges
are not above the law, he said. We dont want judges to
take the role of Parliament, the role of the national council of
provinces, the role of the legislature and the role of this council.
Judges must limit their role. Johannesburg plans to appeal the
verdict.

Internationally, water
activists are celebrating the ruling and vowing to continue challenging
the use of prepayment meters and discrimination against the poor.
Prepayment water meters have spread rapidly throughout Africa and are
used in Tanzania, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, Egypt and beyond. The newly
formed African Water Network has made it a priority to combat the use of
prepayment water meters. In Mumbai, India, activists have hailed the
decision as they seek a stop to prepayment meters in Mumbais
slums.

 Maj Fiil is the former director of Water for All.
She has worked
with groups involved
in the
prepayment meters case over the past seven
years.

Development and the Desert

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico  The Anapra region of Ciudad Juarez is dry
and dusty, the road leading there lined with junkyards. In spring,
fierce winds blow dust so thick it stings the skin and fills the ears
and nostrils of residents scurrying to tend their pigs and chickens on
small farms dotted with shacks made from cinder blocks, scraps of wood
and box springs.

The area is known as a
transfer point for the brutal international drug trade, and at least
eight womens bodies have been found here, part of the femicide for
which Juarez is infamous.

It is a seeming no-mans
land. But local businesspeople and government officials see a far
different future for this chunk of desert. It is the location for the
planned cross-border Jeronimo-Santa Teresa project, a huge if somewhat
amorphous development plan described as including a new city of up to
half a million residents; an expanded trade corridor; a new maquila
industrial park; and a tourist destination complete with casinos.

A key chunk in this
development is the area known as Lomas de Poleo in Anapra, a community
founded in the 1970s largely by migrants from Vera Cruz and other
southern areas of Mexico in search of a humble plot of land to raise a
few animals. Over the decades, the community  more than 300
families at its peak  has petitioned for title to the land under
Mexican land reform laws. The lands ownership chain is a
complicated saga including the company Carbonifera, several murky
private sales, appropriation by the federal government after tax default
and the current residents ongoing claims. At least one federal
document proclaims the land national property. But brothers Jorge and
Pedro Zaragoza, from one of the richest business families in northern
Mexico, are now claiming the land is theirs, inherited from their father
who they say bought it in 1963.

No one showed much interest
in the destitute parcels until 2002, when the Jeronimo project plans
became public knowledge and the Zaragozas began trying to kick residents
out of Lomas de Poleo. Since then, the residents and the Zaragoza
brothers  scions of local gas, dairy and Corona beer franchises,
among other industries  have been locked in a grueling, litigious
and often violent struggle over the land. The Zaragozas have erected a
concrete and barbed wire fence around the disputed area, with the roads
blocked by guard shacks where armed private security guards allegedly
harass residents and prevent visitors and food deliveries.

I cant get
tortillas or water, I cant care for my animals, my friends
cant visit, Im very afraid, especially when my son goes to
work and Im alone, says Irene Caldera, an elderly woman from
Zacatecas who has lived in Lomas de Poleo with her son Salvador Aguero,
56, for 19 years.

Cecilia Espinosa, of the Paso
del Norte Human Rights Center, says the private guards prevent food
delivery trucks from entering and have even prevented individual
residents from bringing in food and construction supplies to fix their
houses. The only providers they allowed in, she says,
were Corona and Lecheria Lucern  the Zaragozas
own companies.

Three deaths in 2005 have
been attributed to the struggle  a man beaten to death as his
house was destroyed and two children who died in a fire residents say
was arson. (The government blamed it on faulty wiring). Other beatings
and physical clashes have been common. The local church was destroyed,
and rebuilt. More than 40 homes have been demolished. Residents blame
these acts on guardia blanca  paramilitary
mercenaries, with alleged ties to violent drug gangs  hired by the
Zaragozas.

At the Zaragozas
behest, the government utility cut off electric service to much of the
area, even after residents had paid out of pocket just a year earlier to
construct the electric infrastructure.

Residents have been offered
new houses on small plots of nearby land. A number of families have
taken the offer, but the 70-plus families who remain in the disputed
area say the new plots are too tiny to raise animals.

Juarez Mayor Reyes Ferriz
backs the Zaragozas claim of ownership, and says there are fewer
than 20 families still in the disputed area.

The landowner has
possession and registered title to the land, says Ferriz. He
allows easements for the possessors of property on the land 
the Lomas residents. Ferriz said the disputed area will not be
valuable for 20 or 30 years, and that it is not geographically
central to the border development plans.

The federal government has
yet to take a definitive stance, though the federal human rights
commission (without binding power) recently said the residents
human rights were being violated.

Pedro Zaragoza was appointed
to the bi-national New Mexico-Chihuahua Commission to promote
development and tourism, convened by the former Chihuahua governor and
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in 2003. The Jeronimo-Santa Teresa
plan has also drawn opposition in the United States, most notably in El
Paso, where it is feared it will mean the gentrification of the
citys historic Segundo Barrio neighborhood. Since controversy over
Lomas de Poleo broke out, U.S. municipal officials and developers have
distanced themselves from the Mexican side of the project.

Veronica Leyva, a
Juarez-based organizer with the bi-national Mexico Solidarity Network,
calls it ironic that the Zaragoza Foundation, a philanthropic entity
funded by the family, promotes anti-poverty and child welfare programs
at the same time the Lomas de Poleo families are being harassed and
repressed. (A spokesperson at the foundation said no one was available
for an interview.)

On April 10, the anniversary
of revolutionary Emiliano Zapatas murder and a day of protest
throughout Mexico, Lomas de Poleo residents and their supporters rallied
outside the municipal hall in Juarez, collecting signatures on a
petition demanding the government recognize the land as federal property
and remove the Zaragozas guards.

We have more rights to
the land than them, says Aguero, brandishing a copy of the 1975
federal decree denoting the existence of 25,000 hectares of federal land
including Lomas de Poleo. If they think they own the land, why did
they wait until four years ago to tell us? Now it is convenient for
them.

Leyva sees the Lomas de Poleo
issue as part of a larger picture of corruption and intimidation in the
border region, which is often convenient for powerful business and
development interests.

The femicide, the
exploitation in the maquilas, the corruption is all linked, she
says. Its all about a lack of human rights which is very
profitable for some people.

 Kari Lydersen

LAWRENCE SUMMERS MEMORIAL AWARD

The July/August Lawrence Summers Memorial Award* goes to Roy Innis,
chair of the Congress of Racial Equality, for comments made during his
address to the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Resource Development Council
for Alaska.

There is an excellent
example of this attack on economic civil rights right here in
Alaska: the recent listing of the Polar Bear under the Endangered
Species Act.

In raising [energy] prices,
this listing will also visit the worst economic harm upon the low-income
families and further handcuff the poor into the bondage of poverty.
..

I call on every one gathered
here today, and every caring, thoughtful citizen in our great nation to
join with me in challenging these Energy Killers, these modern day Bull
Connors and George Wallaces, who are standing in the door, trying to
prevent poor Americans from achieving Martin Luther Kings dream of
equal opportunity and true environmental justice.

*In a 1991 internal memorandum, then-World Bank economist Lawrence
Summers argued for the transfer of waste and dirty industries from
industrialized to developing countries. Just between you and me,
shouldnt the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty
industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)? wrote
Summers, who went on to serve as Treasury Secretary during the Clinton
administration and is the outgoing president of Harvard University.
I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in
the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. ...
Ive always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are
vastly under polluted; their air quality is vastly inefficiently low
[sic] compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Summers later said
the memo was meant to be ironic.